to be told what to do.
His lance went down when they were a hundred paces distant in a gap that was closing at speed. His opponents were up on their stirrups, swords ready to swipe down and render useless those lance points, and while he knew what they were doing was foolish — based on the notion that in the face of such a furious charge the line must melt — he had to admire their courage. The problem they had was simple: they had never met Normans.
Their leader was the first to die on a lance point: thrown by the way as he slashed at the metal tip, it was quickly withdrawn then jammed forward again once his weapon was past the arc of being useful. The point took him in the chest and lifted him bodily off his saddle, his momentum driving it through to come out his back and lifting him bodily off a now rearing horse seeking to avoid a collision.
The forward motion of the Norman line was only what was needed, enough to ensure that when horse met horse, as they were bound to, their mounts could hold their ground, so many Saracens died as had their leader. Others sought to engage the men no longer holding lances, only to find that their opponents, in the main taller than they, could raise their swords higher and bring them down with terrible force on man and metal, might enough to cut through the mail they wore under their black garments.
Then the men on the Norman flanks began to press in from the sloping hillsides, so that many Saracens were now trying and failing to fight two foes. It could not last, for William’s line was pressing forward, lances jabbing, swords swinging and in some cases knives slashing. The enemy broke, as they must, in ones and twos to begin with, then in greater numbers and, as they fled, had they looked over their shoulder, they would have seen the same firm line of shields they had charged against.
The near dead were despatched, any ambulant enemy taken prisoner; they would provide information and all the horses not so wounded they needed their throats cut gathered in as booty. William saw to his wounded — only four of his knights had perished, and they were set across their saddles to be taken back for a Christian burial. The enemy dead were left in the fields for the carrion to consume.
They rode back into the siege lines to cheers from men who were bored with their dull duty, many an eye drawn to the colours that still graced William’s lance, and as he rode, he was thinking how proud his father would be to see that blue and white chequer aloft in such a setting.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next night, hogging the coast in a small boat with half a dozen armed companions, Drogo included, William sailed north towards the ships blockading the mouth of the port, at home in such a vessel; he and his brothers had fished often off the Normandy shore and had once sailed to the Norman Islands to chastise the pirates who raided the Contentin coastline. In the Messina Straits the current was a problem, impeding his passage, but he could see the ships strung out in a line, beating to and fro to hold their station, his destination being the vessel on the outer rim of the great hook which formed the eastern shore of Sicily.
He needed, he knew, to be near that shore, for those Sicilian boatmen he had questioned had told him so, and he also knew that it was the vessel closest inshore, a Ragusan galley of shallow draught, which controlled the section just above the outer siege work built south of the city by George Maniakes. The moon shone on the water, illuminating several vessels, which appeared like black shadows, but William steered for the one showing a red lantern and, once within range, shouted the Greek words he had been told to use.
It was obvious that those aboard were waiting for an approach, they were too alert for a time of day when even sailors slept, and as he came close the reply, also in Greek, was half whispered to him. Even although his knowledge of the language was limited, it was quite simply a demand to be told what he was carrying.
‘Grain,’ he replied, unsheathing his sword.
That had his companions doing likewise. As they bumped alongside, beneath a row of shaded lanterns, hands reached out in the gloom to pull them in. William grasped one using the security that provided to leap for the low bulwark. He got one leg over immediately, to be greeted by a surprised cry, but that turned to something else when the light from a lantern now unshaded showed, not a Sicilian fisherman on the deck, but a mailed Norman knight wielding a sword.
That surprise lasted long enough to get his companions on to the deck, by which time William was shouting his head off and cutting a swathe with his blade that had the sailors diving for anywhere that offered protection. Behind him he heard the splash as some went overboard, either because of their own fear or because his men had tossed them, it made no odds; all he wanted was what he was shouting for, the man who commanded the vessel.
They found him in a tiny cabin under the low poop, cowering on the deck, shaking like a leaf, pleading useless innocence. Below decks were the chained men who rowed this galley, bonded slaves to this cringing parasite. The rest of the small crew, at least those who had not gone overboard, had run for the forepeak, and were now seeking to ward off the point of Drogo’s sword.
Daylight saw them ashore, the galley beached as near to the pavilion of George Maniakes as possible, William dragging the ship’s owner in chains behind him, the rest of his freemen crew shuffling along with Norman blades beating their buttocks.
‘We need to make an example of them,’ William said, after he had explained to the general what he had discovered. ‘I doubt this toad is the only one.’
He knew George Maniakes had a terrible temper; he also knew he was a man of uncommon strength, but he did not appreciate what happened, thinking it a waste of an opportunity to discourage other shipowners from allowing through smugglers. The general picked up the squirming owner in one hand, and literally squeezed the life out of him, blood eventually bursting from his tongue and his ears, and his eyes nearly popping from his head as he expired in agony.
The positive for William was he had proved his point. Not only had he destroyed a base for smuggling, he had fought and beaten the Saracens who rimmed the area and obviously constituted a threat. From now on the Normans would not be bogged down in the siege, they would be free to roam wherever William de Hauteville thought they could do the most damage to the enemy. It was a happy Drogo who led out the next hundred lances, the de Hauteville pennant now fluttering over his head.
It was hard to tell what impact the cutting of that lifeline had on the Messina garrison; their sudden offer to surrender surprised everyone, but they had probably pinned their hopes on Abdullah. The rumours of his gathering an army continued, but as yet no sign of it had come. George Maniakes took possession of the city, shipped off the fighting men to eastern slavery, then collected his army together to march on Rometta, the great fortress that controlled the road to the capital Palermo, a vital link if the whole island was to be subdued. Surprisingly, that too fell in only a month but not without heavy fighting that saw the Normans and the Varangians attacking a breach in the wall and only carrying the day by sheer tenacity.
Both William and Drogo had never fought so hard for so long, slipping on rubble and the blood from dead bodies, as well as the cadavers themselves. The Saracens fought like demons, selling their lives for every footstep, falling under axe and sword, only to be replaced by even more fanatical defenders who took their place and they had to be driven back into the city, then winkled out of alleys, buildings and even cellars.
Many of William’s men died in that breach, as did those of Hardrada; no one came away from the assault without a wound and it was galling to find out, once the city had been taken, that their main opponent, the North African Emir Abdullah al Zirid, had got away with a sizeable force and still represented a threat.
George Maniakes now had open the road to Palermo, but he was well aware of the history of Sicily: going back to Phoenician times it had always been the case that the key to the holding of the island was the great port and city of Syracuse, on the south-eastern side. It was a hard lesson learnt by Athens, Carthage, the Romans, the Vandals and the Saracens themselves: leave it in another’s hands and you were always at risk.
It also had a special significance for the Byzantines — when their greatest ever general, Belisarius, had evicted the Vandals from Sicily in 533 AD, Syracuse had been made their capital. It wounded them that the great cathedral they had built had been turned into a mosque; that inside the city there were hidden relics of saints and martyrs dear to Orthodox hearts. It was the general’s decision, and he made it: the army marched for Syracuse and
